"Fixing" Drawcord Cuffs on Cargo Trousers.

Recently, I picked up some pairs of these trousers, which are pretty decent for outdoor activities, rock climbing and suchlike.

They have a shitload of pockets, the waist is adjustable using some button fastener things, they (so far) seem to be pretty hard wearing, and they have spots at the knees for inserting kneepads - which is exceptionally handy.

Unfortunately, I pretty much immediately ran into a rather irritating quality of life issue, and devised a rather simple solution.

The "drawcord" used on the cuff of the trousers isn't "retained" by anything, so the first time it snags on something, it fucks off into the beyond forever. And its next to impossible to get back in.

Tying a knot in it can be rather rather annoying when you want to keep the cuff of the trouser well out of the way (for example - while wearing climbing shoes and doing weird stuff, the cuff can end up 'over' the heel which can cause issues...). Not to mention untying - that 'fabric tape' cordage is among the most irritating materials.

I happened to have some 550 cordage (paracord) on hand from another project, along with a load of spring loaded toggle stoppers.

This gave me a rather simple idea: if I could run some paracord through the "sleeve" inside the hem, replacing the fabric-tape drawcord, pop on the toggle stopper, and put some figure 8 knots as stopper knots on the ends of the paracord, I'd have a much more robust way of cinching down the cuffs of my trousers when needed.

I should note: "run some paracord through the sleeve" is doing a lot of handwaving in this plan - have you ever tried put the drawstring on a hoodie back in after it inevitably comes out? Its fucking difficult.

The trick I used to get the cordage through the hole/channel, was actually incredibly simple. I pushed some thick gauge enamelled copper wire through the thing. The wire has rigidity, which makes this easy. Once it was out the other side, I simply bent it double at the end and used that to "hold" a bite of paracord which was pulled through the channel.

Both ends of the new draw-cord were put through a toggle lock, and the free ends tied off as figure eight knots, with the end bits of the paracord melted with a lighter to prevent fraying.

So far these have held up extremely well, and allow me to reliably "tighten" the ends of the trousers so they don't get in the way when climbing and suchlike by flapping about the place.